


The Heart

by a_big_apple



Series: Adolescing [3]
Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Frottage, M/M, Nightmares, Puberty, Shota, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-15
Updated: 2010-12-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 06:09:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/719760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_big_apple/pseuds/a_big_apple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Ciel has a birthday and Sebastian tries to figure out what to do with that thing in his chest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nochick_fics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nochick_fics/gifts).



> Written for nochick_fics for her birthday in 2010!

The heart of a demon, Sebastian is learning, is a complex puzzle. Its metaphysical nature throws him off-balance, befuddles his judgement. Human hearts are simple to understand given enough observation, and Sebastian is skilled at that—but feeling the effects of his own, with no clinical distance, is far more trying. For the most part, he attempts to ignore it, though the young master has an uncanny ability to foil that effort with a piercing look or a shy twitch of his needy adolescent body. Sebastian wonders if he hasn’t created a monster, teaching the child pleasure; the boy is adept at stripping away the cold layers of propriety between a butler and his master, a demon and his meal.

It begins to snow before sunrise the morning of December thirteenth; ponderous, fat flakes of white that drift through the pre-dawn and cling at the corners of the windows. By the time Sebastian wakes the little master, the fall is heavier, thick and picturesque, quickly blanketing the lawn. Ciel gets out of bed, stands by the window in bare feet and dressing gown to watch the outside world turn white.

Sebastian lets him stand and watch in spite of the draft for as long as it takes to brew the tea, then urges the boy back to the temporary warmth of his bed. Ciel is pliant this morning, and quiet. Tomorrow he will turn fourteen.

“Sebastian,” he murmurs into the Darjeeling.

“Yes, bocchan?”

“Please tell the servants that I don’t want a fuss. I mean it this year. If I’m lucky the snow will keep Lizzy away, but that’s only half the battle.”

“As you wish, bocchan.”

The boy nurses his tea, and his eyes slide to the window again, blank, as the snow thickens and seals the mansion up in quiet.

***

It snows all day and on into the evening dark, and to Ciel the white cover on the world looks like a shroud. Sebastian coaxes the fire high when it’s time for bed, and tucks hot bricks beneath the covers just far enough down the bed that Ciel can’t burn his soles on them if he stretches full-length. He’s grown a little; last winter the bricks were not quite so far toward the bed’s foot.

He feels oddly trapped as Sebastian tucks the blankets in around him, closed in by the silent white world through the window, and it shouldn’t be as unsettling as it is.

“Will it keep snowing all night?”

“It is possible, bocchan.”

Ciel imagines waking to the windows and doors all blocked, even all the way up here on the second floor, the Earth drowned in snow that piles wet and heavy around the mansion and presses in on all sides. Sebastian hesitates at the doorway, as though he senses Ciel’s unsettled thoughts (and probably he does), but a quiet “goodnight, Sebastian” is enough to dismiss him. The fire crackles in the grate; Ciel counts snowflakes to put himself to sleep.

_His limbs are leaden, immovable; he is buried in snow, and yet the fire surrounds him, it leaps from the grate and slithers along the carpet, climbs the walls and gnaws at the bedspread, and still Ciel cannot move. When he opens his mouth to cry out, the snow fills it, gags him, blots out the sound of his butler’s name. And around him the fire rages, reaches, lays its searing hand on his shoulder and shakes him—_

“Bocchan!”

He wakes gasping for air, almost choking on it, and Sebastian’s warm hand presses firm against his chest as though that touch alone can even out his breathing. It’s the butler’s steadiness that brings him back to the room, the low fire flickering in the hearth where it belongs; his limbs are trembling like reeds in a wind, and he grips the sheets hard and tries to remember how to make his lungs work.

Sebastian’s presence is silent and composed, his face a mask, but when Ciel finds his eyes they flicker with _something_ , a fleeting look he has come to rely on, a sudden depth that holds Ciel in place and brings his mind back to rights. The butler’s gloved hand lingers against his chest for a long moment after he can breathe again, then slides away. “Would you like a calming drink, bocchan?” the demon murmurs.

“No. It was just a dream.”

“Yes.”

***

The child slumps back into his pillows, boneless, and tugs the blankets up to his chin before Sebastian can do it for him. His mouth screws up into a determined little scowl, and he takes a breath to speak.

“Sebastian—”

“Until you fall asleep, bocchan,” the butler replies smoothly, sinking into the chair beside the bed. It’s come to be a habit; the little master’s nightmares claw at him, freeze him through, and other nights the child’s hormone-driven dreams lure the demon to his bed and the sharp scent of want. Either way, Sebastian spends much time in this room in the middle of the night.

This time though, Ciel glares at him through the dim. “Don’t presume to speak for me. I don’t need you to stay.”

The demon blinks at this sudden stubbornness; the unseemly organ in his chest seems to clench and he ignores it, covers it with a tiny smile. “No?”

Ciel’s scowl deepens, and he shoves his head further into the pillows. Sebastian’s smile widens; the child doesn’t like his bluff called. “Fourteen is too old to be frightened of dreams.”

“As you say,” the demon murmurs, amused. “Then I will tend the fire and leave you to your rest.” 

He’s stalling, and he knows it, and yet he bends to shift the coals with bare hands, urging the flames up a little higher in the chilly room. Ciel ignores him forcefully for a minute or two, eyes tightly closed, but when Sebastian reaches into the foot of the bed to exchange cooling bricks for freshly hot ones, he peeks down at him with one eye half-open. “Do you sleep, Sebastian?”

An interesting question—or perhaps interesting that the child has never thought to ask it before. “I can, and often do. But your call will always wake me.”

“You always look…so put together. Dressed and hair in place and here almost before I can call you. Is that some kind of…demon thing?”

Sebastian chuckles. “I suppose you could call it that. You’ve seen my speed.”

“Hmm.” The boy seems to chew this over for a moment, then closes his eye again and nestles deeper into his bed. On a whim, Sebastian reaches past the heated bricks to brush the sole of one small foot with his fingertips, and Ciel flinches into a ball like a roly-poly bug, scowling fiercely. “ _Goodnight_ , Sebastian,” he snipes, and the butler straightens with a smile and goes to the door.

“According to Tanaka,” he murmurs, palm on the door handle, “your lady mother did not give birth until 11:06 in the evening. Though it is now the day of your birth, you’ll not actually turn fourteen for nearly twenty hours.” The child doesn’t answer, but his breath is far from the deep, steady rhythm of sleep. Though he doesn’t move, Sebastian can tell that the boy is restless. Still, his dismissal was clear, and he retreats, pulling the door silently shut behind him.

***

Outside, the snow is still falling. Even in his warm bed it makes him shiver, so he wraps himself in a blanket and goes to the window to watch it come down. The room is too large, and the outdoors too dark and unknown; he is uneasy. He wishes (but tries not to wish too loudly, or Sebastian will hear) that he’d let the butler stay.

There’s nothing for it. He’s grown to accustomed to that steady presence. Tomorrow night he will be fourteen, and he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.

He’s only seen the butler’s room once or twice. He remembers it being small and bare, below ground and without windows. With the blanket trailing behind him like a wedding veil and his favorite pillow tucked under one arm, Ciel pads barefoot through the halls. The hallway floors chill his feet as he searches out the servants’ quarters, takes a wrong turning, comes full circle again before he finds the proper door. 

He’s certain Sebastian won’t sleep through his entry; in fact, the demon is likely not asleep at all, waiting for him to open the door, that _smirk_ on his face…. Ciel scowls, clutches the blanket closed with one hand, pushes the door open with the other.

It’s entirely dark; there’s no fire, and the room is icy and quiet. Ciel scuffs his way across the floor until he bumps knees first into the bed, and still his butler has not spoken. Feeling his way with hand and knees, he climbs onto the mattress, perches gingerly on the edge of it. “It’s freezing,” he whispers, and finally hears the softest breath of a laugh. A fire sparks to life in the grate, and the flare of light illuminates Sebastian, in a nightshirt of all things, holding the blankets up for Ciel to slide in beside him.

“I’m letting all the warm air out waiting for you, bocchan.”

Ciel stares for a moment, taking in this absurdity, then shoves his body in close. “Shut up.”

***

The little master’s limbs tremble, even under the blankets, even pressed along his own warm body. Sebastian tucks him close, delicately, as if he were some fragile creature, and tries to suppress the little flutter in his chest as the boy nestles closer. He’s never ventured to Sebastian’s room on his own before, nor to Sebastian’s bed, yet he curls up against him with a resigned and comfortable little sigh, shoving his own pillow under his head. His face is so close that Sebastian can taste his breath on that little exhale, a little stale from sleep, but with a hint of his favorite tooth powder. One eye, the right, opens to regard Sebastian carefully.

“I can’t believe you wear a nightshirt to bed.”

“What else would I wear?”

“I don’t know. I always imagined you sleeping in your clothes.”

“That would be impractical, bocchan,” he murmurs, and that single eye with his seal on it draws him closer, until their noses nearly touch. The boy finds the matching seal on his butler’s hand, and presses his palm to it, and tips his head back just a little as the contract flares between them. Sebastian finds that between the urges of his chest and his groin and his stomach, he cannot resist that tiny flash of pale throat, and lowers his mouth to taste it.

Ciel’s fingers tighten over the back of his hand as he lets the tips of fangs scrape along delicate skin; his little master sucks in a deep breath, blows it out again, slides onto his back and pulls Sebastian over him like a blanket. He follows the unspoken command willingly; this child’s desire sets him alight like nothing else, makes his blasted heart race and his blood flow unerringly south. Over time he’s come to accept the strength of this reaction and let it slide, though as he smoothes his tongue along Ciel’s jawline, he knows deep down that he is more tied to this master, this meal, than he should be.

Still, the taste of him is intoxicating, his skin and his soft hitching breaths and his soul shining out. He fidgets under the weight of Sebastian’s body, cock already stirring between them, but Sebastian will not be distracted yet; Ciel is too delicious, the barest hint of an adam’s apple bobbing, the flare of his nostrils when Sebastian covers the boy’s mouth with his own. 

Ciel has been taught to offer his tongue and he does so, eager, and the demon devours it blissfully. Then he feels the child’s fitful hands fist in his nightshirt and tug, demanding. Sebastian kisses him hard in answer and lifts his body just enough; hand over hand Ciel pulls the shirt up his back, and breaks away from the kiss to gasp in a breath and yank the fabric over his head. One arm at a time Sebastian slithers out of the shirt and tosses it aside, and Ciel’s eye glows softly as he slides restless hands over the butler’s naked skin.

***

It seems impossible now, with Sebastian’s skin searing him everywhere it touches, that he was ever cold in this room, in this bed. Ciel lets his eyes flutter closed as the demon shifts himself further up the bed, and can’t bite back a soft cry as a cock, hard and hot and bigger than his own, pokes up under his ruched-up nightshirt and rubs up alongside his own erection like a happy cat. 

A low growl rumbles up in Sebastian’s chest, and Ciel presses his face there to feel it, struck dumb by the slow friction just where he longs for it most. Feeling suddenly daring, he twists to bite down on a nipple, and Sebastian moans gratifyingly into his hair as his hips find a slow gliding rhythm. 

Ciel is undone; he is well trapped by the demon’s limbs, but he no longer cares, and in spite of himself he feels _safe_ here. The man’s weight could crush the breath out of him, yet he feels inexplicably light, the yoke of sadness and vengeance and the Phantomhive name burned away by the pleasure that licks up his limbs like flames. He arches up hard, seeking, and marvels that every time Sebastian touches him this way, the urgency he feels takes him newly by surprise. His nightshirt is limp with sweat now, riding higher and higher up his stomach and chest as Sebastian rocks against him; it catches on his nipples and tickles at his ribs, and his thighs tremble, trapped between Sebastian’s. 

His butler’s cock leaks, coats his own with it, slicks a trail along his belly; Ciel doesn’t do that yet, he’s only recently started to ejaculate at all, and some small part of his mind is fascinated while the rest of him just presses harder against that blissful friction, lets go an undignified whine every time Sebastian’s scrotum knocks against his own. Blinded with want, he fumbles a hand in search of his butler’s, presses his palm tight to the seal. It flares like a current between them, crackles over Ciel’s skin—the demon’s hunger, like a dog on a leash, all that power bending to Ciel’s will. And beneath it, a steady driving thrum— _badump, badump, badump_ —the heartbeat setting the pace of their bodies.

“ _Bocchan,_ ” the demon hisses into his hair, and the contract surges again, and that’s all it takes—Ciel scrabbles at the sheets for purchase and throws his head back, the world fracturing around him into a million tiny pieces.

***

All he can hear is his own heartbeat in his ears and his master’s stuttered cries, coming in searing little spurts between their stomachs.

He pauses out of ingrained habit, trying to reign in the sheer force of _need_ that makes his breath come fast. The child is his master; the child orders, and wants, and receives. The child’s pleasure has been his goal all along. But he has never been so close, so lost, so—

Then Ciel huffs a breath against his chest and presses skinny fingers into the skin of his lower back, tugging him closer. “You don’t have to stop. Don’t. Don’t stop.”

It’s an order, and it lights like a match in his chest and at the base of his spine. “Yes, my lord,” he husks against the crown of that mussed head, and slides his cock through the sticky puddle on Ciel’s stomach and the scratchy dusting of hair. The fingers on his back trace easy patterns, exploring, and the other hand stays plastered to the seal of their contract; through it a pleased and quiet urging surrounds him, and curiosity, and something warmer that drives away all reason. He’s close, so close, and he’s never felt human pleasure like this, reverberating out through his limbs like the plucked notes of a string bass. 

Through the haze, he can feel the featherlight touch of lips along his collarbone and curious fingers that skitter down over his ass; he muffles a low sound in the pillows and ramps up the pace. Then, slowly, two skinny arms slide around his back and grip at the spots, just beside his shoulderblades, where wings lie hiding, waiting to spring out—and all at once it’s too much, that touch and the surprising brightness of the boy beneath him and the quick tightening of his chest and his balls at once. 

“I want to see you,” Ciel murmurs, tipping his face up, and Sebastian props himself up on hands and elbows to obey; blue eyes fix on his and hold them. “I want to watch you come.”

“Yes, my lord,” the demon moans out, and shudders, and does.

***

In the morning Ciel wakes in his own bed. The sun through the window is blinding, and drifts of snow have piled up along the sill and in the corners of the panes; he can smell tea brewing, and when he stretches out he’s suspiciously not sticky—could he really have slept through a bath? 

“Good morning, bocchan,” comes a murmur from beside the bed, and he turns, peering under sleep-glued eyelids. 

“Good morning, Sebastian.”

For a moment they’re silent, regarding each other. There’s something changed in the butler’s expression, something unidentifiable but maybe a little more open than before. Then he reaches out to brush unruly bangs out of Ciel’s eyes and thumbs a bit of gunk from the corner of one, and then he knows the difference—this gentleness is new, and unfamiliar to a boy gone four years with a demon for his guardian. Sebastian’s hands are warm, and the bed that last night had seemed a trap is now a cozy nest, and Ciel wants to tell the demon this, and doesn’t know how.

Sebastian rises, pours the tea.

“Is it still snowing?” Ciel asks, quiet, and his butler bends and offers the fragrant, steaming cup on its saucer.

“No, bocchan,” he replies with a smile. “It’s not snowing anymore.”

***

The heart of a demon, Sebastian is learning, is a complex puzzle. He has tried to ignore it, to no avail. The only choice, it seems, is to let it have its way. He is unused to guidance from an organ not involved with meals, and his hunger is still strong. 

The heart, it appears, is stronger.


End file.
